With the widespread usage of the smart User Equipment (UE) (e.g., the mobile phone), applications on the UE are increasingly richer. Application services, such as microblog and social network instant messaging (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, QQ and MSN) are more and more popular in the users.
With regard to application services such as Twitter, Facebook, QQ and Msn, users corresponding to the UEs are usually managed on a group basis in corresponding Application Server (AS) according to the users' requirement. For example, the same message is usually sent to all users in one group. However, the UEs in the same group in the AS will not be uniformly managed at the network side. For example, with regard to services such as QQ and Msn, a message is usually sent to each UE in the group through the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) and the Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) in the Core Network (CN), and the Radio Network Controller (RNC) and the NodeB (NB) in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN), respectively. With regard to services such as Twitter and Facebook, corresponding AS adopts the instant pushing mode, i.e., generally pushing a message to each UE in the group through the GGSN and the SGSN in the CN, and the RNC and the NB in the UTRAN, respectively. The two mechanisms of PUSH message usually adopted in the Twitter service are POLL and PUSH, and the prior art mainly uses the POLL mode, in which the UE actively acquires the group message from the AS of the Twitter service. In the PUSH mode, the AS of the Twitter service will notify the UE to acquire the group message only if a topic to which the user corresponding to the UE subscribes is updated. As compared with the POLL mode, the PUSH mode generates less signaling, and does not need to frequently send a refresh request to the AS.
During the process of implementing the present invention, the inventor finds that the prior art at least has a problem that in the implementation of the PUSH mechanism of the prior art, the UEs in the same group cannot be uniformly managed at the network side based on the groups in the AS.